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The medical director of the Texas Medical Board has retired, lower than two weeks after conservative lawmakers publicized his employment with a Deliberate Parenthood laboratory.
Dr. Robert Bredt has labored as medical director for the state medical licensing company since 2012, incomes $185,000 a 12 months. Whereas the members of the licensing board are appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, the medical director position is employed by company management.
Based on his resumé, Bredt additionally labored at Deliberate Parenthood South Texas Laboratory since 2011, in addition to Genics Laboratory in Las Vegas and San Antonio since 2022. Bredt, 62, can also be a professor, advisor and laboratory inspector.
Bredt submitted his retirement paperwork on Tuesday, which was additionally his final day of labor, a medical board spokesperson stated in an electronic mail. Bredt declined to remark.
This kerfuffle started not with a debate about reproductive well being care, however fairly, one other extremely politicized combat about COVID therapies. The Texas Medical Board has been locked in an ongoing authorized battle with Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a Houston ear, nostril and throat physician, about her anti-vaccine stances and use of ivermectin to deal with COVID. In 2023, the board filed an official grievance towards Bowden, alleging she violated the usual of care, failed to keep up patient-doctor confidentiality and acted unprofessionally by treating a COVID affected person with out inspecting them
After she refused to settle, Bowden ended up earlier than an administrative regulation choose via the State Workplace of Administrative Hearings. As a part of that case, the Texas Medical Board filed a movement asking to introduce Bredt as an skilled witness, to testify concerning the board’s traditional practices and procedures. The movement included Bredt’s resumé, which confirmed his employment at a Deliberate Parenthood lab.
State Rep. Brian Harrison, a conservative Republican from Midlothian and frequent critic of the medical board, stated he made the choice to go public with this data “within minutes” after he realized about it.
“There’s some real irony here in that in their zeal to prosecute a doctor, they had to make public that the medical director … is literally also a Planned Parenthood employee,” Harrison informed The Texas Tribune on Wednesday.
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He posted Bredt’s resumé on X and despatched Abbott a letter demanding Bredt’s termination. He stated he would file laws to defund the medical board, and his workplace would name the company day by day till Bredt was fired.
“This fox must be removed from the guardianship of the henhouse,” he wrote to Abbott.
Harrison additionally stated Abbott ought to direct all state businesses to make sure none of their workers work for Deliberate Parenthood. Whereas there isn’t a regulation or regulation prohibiting a state worker from additionally working at Deliberate Parenthood, the reproductive well being care group has lengthy been enemy quantity one in all Texas conservatives. The state sacrificed hundreds of thousands of federal {dollars} to maintain Deliberate Parenthood suppliers out of the Medicaid program, main dozens of household planning clinics to shut within the course of, and is at present making an attempt to bankrupt Deliberate Parenthood with a $1.8 billion lawsuit.
Deliberate Parenthood clinics in Texas not present abortions, however that has completed little to cut back conservatives’ vitriol in direction of the well being care supplier. In a letter despatched to members of the Texas Medical Board simply earlier than the tip of the 12 months, calling for Bredt’s termination, state Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican from Deer Park, known as Deliberate Parenthood “a criminal enterprise that profits off of killing babies.”
In a press release, Deliberate Parenthood South Texas CEO Laura Terrill accused politicians of losing “valuable time and resources playing doctor in an act of political theatre.”
“Dr. Bredt’s work at Planned Parenthood South Texas (PPST) reflects his unwavering commitment to providing the highest standards of medical care,” she wrote in a press release. “Planned Parenthoods in Texas follow the law, full stop. We have, and always will, comply with state and federal regulations while focusing on what truly matters: delivering essential health care services to the tens of thousands of Texans who depend on us every day.”
Harrison stated Wednesday that he’s happy Bredt not works for the state, however is outraged that he was employed within the first place. He desires an investigation into the medical board, and the chief department’s hiring practices, and stated he should push a invoice to defund the board itself.
This isn’t the primary time Harrison has led a cost to power a state entity to bow to his imaginative and prescient of conservative values. Final 12 months, he claimed credit score for Texas A&M eliminating its LGBTQ research minor, though the college stated he performed no position, and pressured the Texas Workforce Fee to take away a line on its web site saying it might examine claims of discrimination based mostly on gender id.
Disclosure: Deliberate Parenthood has been a monetary supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partly by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full record of them right here.
